Birthday Cakes

I joined the Good Housekeeping Test Kitchen staff a few
months ago and I've been having a blast. Like my colleagues, I've always loved
food-both eating it and cooking it. When I'm creating new dishes for the
magazine, I draw inspiration from fresh, seasonal ingredients and my favorite
chefs and cookbook authors. But most of the time, the first thing I consider
is: "Would I make this at home?" Every night, I have five mouths to feed in
very little time.

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From the moment I arrive home, I need to get dinner on
the table in 15 minutes--35 minutes max.
Otherwise, my angelic little girls turn into hungry grouches and bedtime gets
unbearably late (for them and me). But there are countless waysto quickly get delicious, homemade meals on the table.
Besides, cooking for them is a real joy.

Everyday cooking is fun, but the highlight of the year is
making their birthday cakes. Last month, my twin girls turned six. They
requested a bug party and thus, bug
cakes. One asked for a spider and the other requested a caterpillar; one wanted
chocolate, another vanilla. (Yes, their personalities differ.)

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Inspired by Eric Carle's beautiful books, I modeled the
cakes after the "very busy spider" and the "very hungry caterpillar." A moistchocolate sheet cake formed the base of
the spider and I used a classicbutter cake recipe for the head and cupcake-body of the caterpillar.
To tint the buttercream and
marzipan (shaped into eyes, noses, and antennae), I used a variety of gel paste
food colorings. I love the vibrant colors I get from gel paste; they are to
liquid food coloring what tempura paint is to oil paint. For the legs, I turned
to supermarket candy.

Making these cakes for my girls made me so happy. They were
thrilled to see them-and just as happy to eat them too. It's so much fun
experimenting with new baking techniques, batters, frostings, and decorations,
and I'm going to be doing a lot of it soon as we start working on the holidays
in the Good Housekeeping test kitchen. What do you like to bake?